


Amidst the Rubble (We Can Build a Better Us) or "Five Times During Bucky’s Recovery and One Time Everything Was Pretty Okay"

by EmilianaDarling



Series: Building From the Ground Up [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 5+1 Things, Bisexual Characters, Bisexuality, Brief Graphic Violence, Brief Period-Typical Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Instability, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Recovery, gif warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 20:10:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1562501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmilianaDarling/pseuds/EmilianaDarling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve <i>wants</i> to be a good friend, to be selfless and strong and endlessly patient. To be confident that he’s making the right choices, doing the right things. To be the person that Bucky needs him to be. </p>
<p>Mostly he just feels useless instead. </p>
<p>None of it is easy, but nothing worthwhile ever is.<br/> </p>
<p>[This fic is a sequel to "Reconstruction Site" but can easily stand on its own. This fic takes place chronologically third in the series but was written second.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Amidst the Rubble (We Can Build a Better Us) or "Five Times During Bucky’s Recovery and One Time Everything Was Pretty Okay"

**Author's Note:**

> And here we have the fic that's been single-handedly eating my brain for the past few weeks!
> 
> Although this fic takes place after [Reconstruction Site](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1439917), it can easily be read in isolation. All you have to know is that Bucky spent a few months leading Steve and Sam on a wild goose chase through Eastern Europe before finally showing up and agreeing to travel with them. Everything else is icing on the cake.

\--

 

 

**One  
** **(Six Months After)**

“This is the one,” Bucky declares, calm and self-assured as he points at one of the markers on the map of Volgograd spread out across their hotel’s coffee table.

Across the table, Steve can see Sam nodding thoughtfully.

“Underneath the daycare,” says Sam, his mouth quirking into a humourless smile. “Smart. Shitty as all hell, but smart.”

For a brief moment, Bucky’s eyes flash over to where Sam is sitting. He tenses up – then nods once, quick and efficient and all Winter Soldier, his mouth hardening into a tight line.

“From what I can remember, it’s a scientific research facility. Should still be operational, but I doubt the security will be too high.” Bucky pauses for a half-second, shrugging his shoulders infinitesimally. “Pretty sure they kept me there once.”

It’s not unexpected – not even a little bit – but the confirmation still hits Steve like a dull blow to the pit of his stomach. He sits and stares straight ahead at the map on the table, forearms resting on his knees. Doesn’t let on what he’s thinking about. Steve’s used to it by now, after all. The constant little reminders of all the things Bucky’s been through over the years. All the ways he’s suffered, and all the ways Steve wasn’t there to help him.

He shoves it all aside, reels himself in so that he can focus on the mission. Bucky doesn’t need him to be lost in his own head right now: what Bucky needs is for Steve to focus. His eyes quickly scan over the map, thinking about _strategy_ and _risk assessment_ instead of the gnawing hole in his chest. After a moment, Steve nods.

“We’ll hit it up just like the one in Bucharest,” Steve announces, looking up from the map to lock eyes with Sam across the table. “Sam and I will break in, draw attention as best we can. Bucky will follow and take out whatever backup shows up. We’ll rendezvous outside the main lab and work together to destroy any machines or data we can get our hands on.” Steve glances over at Bucky, then back at Sam again. “Any questions?”

It’s an easy enough operation; one that he and Sam have pulled plenty of times during their strange half-chase half-mission across Eastern Europe, and Bucky’s been right there with them the past few times they’ve stormed a HYDRA base like this. Both of them shake their heads. 

For a few moments, nobody speaks – before Sam gets awkwardly to his feet, glancing between him and Bucky with a peculiar expression on his face.

“If that’s everything, I’ll just… be going to bed, then,” says Sam pointedly, walking slowly over to the hotel room door. He looks uneasy, cautious. As though he isn’t sure what’s going to happen between them when he leaves.

And really, Steve doesn’t blame him. It’s been six months since Washington, four months since he and Sam picked up the trail in Eastern Europe. Since they started following Bucky from one execution site to another, a trail of HYDRA corpses left like breadcrumbs in his wake.

It’s been less than one month since Bucky came to Steve in the night, sudden and brutal and entirely unexpected, declaring his intention to work with them to take down and dismantle some of the remaining HYDRA outposts in this part of the world.

It’s not as though Sam has the same history with Bucky that Steve does, either. Doesn’t have the instinctual knowledge that this is _Bucky_ , that this is his _friend_. That this is somebody who would never hurt him if he could help it, who would rather die himself than leave Steve behind.

Steve gets that, he does. Working alongside the person who once ripped off your wing and then kicked you off the side of a helicarrier must be more than a little surreal, and it’s incredible just how supportive Sam’s been so far.

With a nod to them both, Sam heads outside, closes the door – and suddenly Steve and Bucky are alone.

The silence in the room seems to hum a little louder in his absence, the glow of the fluorescent lights harsh in the dingy space and against the walls that are more grey than off-white. Bucky’s still looking down at the map, impassive and silent and making no motion to leave.

 And really, Steve can’t help running his eyes over him. Bucky’s hair is still strangely long; it hangs in front of his eyes when he leans over the map, makes it even more difficult to know what he’s thinking.  He’s dressed in a black t-shirt and jeans that don’t fit him at all, and he’s sitting with the kind of unmotivated inertia that says he could sit there all day unless someone gives him an order. As though his own discomfort is still secondary to the mission; as though what he wants still doesn’t matter at all.

Six months ago, Steve Rogers went into a fight he _knew_ he wasn’t going to walk away from. Let his shield slip through his fingers and raised his hands in the air, consciously chose to not fight back because he knew he would rather die than live in a world where Bucky was dead because of him again.  

Sometimes, when he looks at Bucky, Steve still can’t believe his eyes. Can’t reconcile the sight of Bucky’s face with the world around them, can’t believe how stupidly, unthinkably _lucky_ he is to have the person he’s known best and longest back with him again.

(He thinks it might make him a bad person, sometimes. Being grateful in some obscure way for all the horrible things that happened to Bucky, all the ways he’s been twisted and wrecked and wiped clean and used as long as Steve gets to have him here now. It’s not good and it’s not right, and no matter what he does Steve can’t help himself from feeling that way.)

It had felt like a dream, the night that Bucky crept into his hotel room. The night he pinned Steve down, told him in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t the man he used to be but he wasn’t the Winter Soldier either. That Steve was just going to have to accept that if there was any hope for Bucky to be a part of his life again.

In the privacy of his own mind, Steve thinks it still feels like a dream even now.

With a jolt, Steve realizes he’s been staring at Bucky’s hunched form for far too long to be comfortable. He looks away quickly, making a show of straightening some of the markers on the map to feign busyness. He coughs.

“So,” says Steve after a few moments of silence, grasping at straws for something to say. Bucky doesn’t look up from the map.

For all that he’s been in communication with them for almost a month now, Bucky has largely remained silent on anything that could be categorized as _tactically irrelevant_. He doesn’t always stay the night at the hotels Steve and Sam stay at, and hasn’t given more than a bare bones account of his movements over the past seventy years. He’s been silent on all the things Steve thinks really matter, and this is one of the first opportunities Bucky’s given them to talk about something other than mission parameters in weeks.

“So,” Steve starts again. “You think they might have kept you at this facility for a little while.”

He _flinches_ internally, chastising himself for saying the first thing that came into his head instead of thinking it all the way through. It was a stupid thing to say, insensitive and uncalled for, and Steve’s just opening his mouth to apologize when Bucky shrugs dispassionately.

“Think so,” he says, looking up from the map for the first time and holding Steve’s gaze. His blue eyes are steely in a way Steve doesn’t remember them being when they were growing up, but can recall seeing after Steve rescued him from Zola’s experiments. They had been full of grim determination and ruthlessness, then. As though fighting in the war was the last place Bucky wanted to be, but he would suffer through it anyways.

Now all of that is amplified a hundredfold, but the most upsetting thing is how _calm_ Bucky’s being about everything that happened to him. In the days after Steve rescued him from Zola, Bucky had raged with impotent fury until he fell asleep, had snarled his intention to _kill that son of a bitch the next time I see him, Steve, I fucking swear_ until he wore himself out too much to stay awake any longer, body and mind finally collapsing into sleep under the weight of torture and exhaustion and relief.

It’s as though the Bucky he used to know has been overlaid with tracing paper, drawn over with thick black pen – but with little hints of the original sketch still visible underneath.

“Does it make you… upset?” Steve prompts, raising his eyebrows a little bit encouragingly. “The things they did to you. The fact that we’re going to be seeing them tomorrow.”

He can feel a horrible sadness twist at the base of his stomach when he sees Bucky tilt his head to one side, visibly _thinking_ about how to answer the question.

It’s… strange. Before, when it was Steve and Sam following the trail of corpses Bucky left in his wake across Eastern Europe, Bucky had clearly and intentionally targeted people who had been involved with the Winter Soldier. The ones who had hurt him the worst, the ones who created the technology that was used to break him. The ones whose use of the Winter Solder had been particularly grotesque, particularly _unforgivable_.

It had been hard for Steve, finding the bodies of the people Bucky killed – most of them with a single shot to the head, execution-style – and knowing that he fundamentally could not disagree with their fate. That he may very well have done the same, if he had found those people first. 

For all that, though, since Bucky has joined up with them, it’s become obvious to Steve that the situation isn’t as straightforward as he initially thought. For one thing, t’s remarkable how little Bucky’s self-imposed mission actually seems to have been about personal vengeance. There’s no _anger_ in Bucky, no sense of betrayal or hurt as far as Steve can see.

It’s almost as though he knows intellectually that he _should_ want to kill the people who hurt him, but can’t actually manage to scrape together any strong feelings about it.

He asked Sam about it, once, on one of the days Bucky vanished into the ether for a few hours without explanation. Sam just got quiet and contemplative for a moment before suggesting that _I dunno, man – I can’t pretend I know what’s going on inside his head right now. Maybe he just doesn’t feel like enough of a person to feel wronged yet._

Steve still thinks about that, sometimes. Lying in bed awake at night and staring up at the ceiling, Bucky asleep in the matching double bed next to him. Bucky always used to snore, back in the day. Not loudly or anything, just the occasional quiet little snuffle. Not much more than a tiny reminder of his presence.

He doesn’t snore anymore – one of the countless things his time with HYDRA has taken from him. It leaves the room far too quiet, the silence hanging in the air unbroken by even that quietly human sound.

Steve is still waiting for Bucky to respond, eyebrows raised and head cocked to one side, trying to look as non-threatening as possible.

After a very long pause, Bucky quirks his mouth in some approximation of a smile.

“Yeah, of course it does,” says Bucky. His voice is careful, easy. Steve searches, but he can’t find even the smallest hint of any real emotion in there.

There is a beat where both of them just sit there, Steve’s heart sinking just a little in his chest. After a moment, Bucky stands. He moves with a grace he never had during the war, all of his energy conserved and his movement streamlined.

“Think I’ll head to bed now,” says Bucky evenly, looking down at Steve with what could almost pass for a smile on his face, and the worst thing is that he’s not upset, not even a little. It’s as though none of it touches him, and Steve thinks he would be glad for Bucky’s apparent peace of mind if he wasn’t so worried about what’s going to happen when it finally runs out. “G’night, Steve.”

“Goodnight,” Steve replies, abrupt and clumsy, and Bucky turns and walks away.

As soon as the bathroom door is closed, Steve closes his eyes and lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding.  

 

\--

 

With Bucky by his side again, eliminating HYDRA outposts almost feels like old times: tracking down enemy bases, charging in with guns blazing. A concrete enemy for Steve to attack and a clear goal in his mind.

It almost feels like old times, except for the part where it couldn’t be more different.

He and Sam are standing outside a set of great metal doors, breathing a little heavily, prepared to face whatever might be on the other side. They’ve only been waiting on Bucky for less than a minute, but Steve knows that every second counts when you’re in the middle of an operation.   

“You sure Barnes is following us?” Sam asks, raising his eyebrows and shooting Steve a brief but significant look. He has a gun in each hand and looks ready for another round, his shoulders set and his eyes determined.

“He is,” comes Bucky’s voice from directly behind them, and Steve and Sam both spin around.

None of them have uniforms to wear during these operations, exactly, but Bucky’s all-black ensemble manages to be almost as intimidating as his old Winter Soldier getup. He’s standing right behind them, sleek and menacing and his metal arm gleaming, and for a split second even Steve has to remind himself that Bucky isn’t a threat to them anymore. To no one’s surprise, he’s managed to sneak up behind them without their noticing.

Slightly more unexpected is the sight of the HYDRA security guard that Bucky has by the throat, metal fingers clamped around the man’s neck and holding him up so that the man’s feet are dangling just above the floor.

The security guard claws at the metal hand for a few more seconds before going limp – passed out, probably, because if Bucky had intended to kill him he would be dead already – and Bucky releases his grip. The man’s body hits the ground with an undignified _thump_.

Bucky glances down at the body on the ground, then turns his gaze to Steve and Sam. He raises his eyebrows, which makes Steve snort out loud. It’s just dramatic and overblown enough to remind him of some of the stunts Bucky pulled during the war.

“Hey, Buck,” says Steve as he shoots him a brief smile, shifting his shield in his hands and nodding at the great metal doors behind him. “You ready?”

Cocking his head to one side, Bucky gives him a narrow-eyed look that says _please_ as clearly as though he’d spoken the word out loud. Bucky strides between them, pulling a small device out of his pocket and attaching it to the solid metal door.

All three of them take a step back. After a few seconds, the device detonates with a small, contained _boom_. The doors swing open and they push their way inside, charging into the room with weapons drawn.

It takes Steve about two seconds to realize that something is horribly, unquestionably wrong.

Someone is screaming, high-pitched and wailing and _endless_ , as though the sound has been ripped right out of their throat. It’s the kind of wordless, mindless shriek that makes Steve’s blood run cold, makes the bottom fall right out of his stomach. All three of them lurch to a stop, struck motionless by the animalistic _agony_ of the scream, and for a white-hot moment Steve’s first instinct is to assume they’ve walked into some kind of torture chamber. 

A quick look around makes him realize, though. There are men in white coats with shocked expressions on their faces, and the room is filled with dozens of kinds of computers and pieces of monitoring equipment. And in the middle of it all there is a woman with shoulder-length blonde hair clamped into the great metal chair in the centre of the room. Her arms and legs are restrained and there’s a metal fixture clamped onto her head, the persistent buzz of electricity barely audible above the screaming. Steve thinks she might have some kind of shock guard in, but it barely does anything to muffle the inhuman noises coming out of her mouth.

“Shit,” he hears Sam mutter beside him. There are scientists turning to look at them with expressions of shock and fear on their faces, and Steve’s breath catches in his throat because between Natasha and Bucky he has a pretty good idea of what’s going on.

This place isn’t just operational, and it isn’t limited to scientific research. It’s a brainwashing facility, and it’s still actively experimenting on human subjects.

For a moment, Steve is so furious that his whole mind goes blank. He can’t _think_ , can barely register what’s happening in front of him, can’t put his thoughts in order to make a move or attack or—

The thought of his best friend blindsides him, welling up from some instinctual part of his brain, and it’s enough to make Steve come back to himself. He doesn’t see any of the scientists holding a gun but it’s still stupid to turn around without being positive, to half-frantically look over his shoulder to find out how Bucky is reacting to this.  

There are no words to describe the expression on Bucky’s face. He is frozen in place and _staring_ at the screaming girl, his face a rictus of horror and fury so pure it almost hurts to look at him. All of the colour has drained out of his face, as has every trace of the humanity he’s worked so hard at reconstructing in himself over the past few months.

 Right now, there is no part of Bucky that isn’t defined by rage.

There are the sounds of yelling all around them now, the scientists shouting their displeasure and terror and outrage in Russian, and Sam is the first one to recover. He shoots his guns with a precision born of years of training, aiming for kneecaps and shoulders and anything that will disable without killing. The scientists could have information they might need to help the girl or to lead them to other HYDRA outposts, Steve _knows_ that. But he’s still profoundly grateful that Sam has taken that decision out of his hands, because right now Steve doesn’t know what kind of call he would make. 

“Hands in the air!” Sam barks, and his meaning seems to come across despite the language difference. “All of you, stand down!”

For the past few seconds Steve has been frozen in place. Now his body jolts into action, and he hurls himself towards what looks like the main computer console.  

It’s a complicated piece of machinery, though. No obvious off switch he can slam a hand over and end the girl’s pain, end her _torture_. He stares at the dozens of buttons and switches with pure desperation pounding in his chest, frantically trying to think of a way to turn the machine off without accidentally killing her, and all the while she keeps screaming, screaming, _screaming_. Steve has enough presence of mind to scramble around looking for an outlet for a few seconds, but it’s Bucky who comes up with the actual solution.

He sees Bucky moving out of the corner of his eye, sees him march up to what looks like the head scientist. The man is lying on the ground in a pool of his own blood, clutching at his leg and sobbing incoherently when Bucky reaches him. The metal arm flashes and Bucky grabs him up by the back of his lab coat, physically drags the man over to the machine Steve is standing in front of. All the while the man wails and sobs, choking out words in a language Steve doesn’t understand. He leaves a trail of blood behind him on the floor.  

As soon as he’s in front of the machine, Bucky shoves the scientist’s face right up against the controls, puts a gun to his head, and barks out an order in clipped, furious Russian. The man nods frantically, reaching out with trembling hands to press a series of buttons that finally, _finally_ make the machine go dead.

The screaming stops, too, cutting off with a choked-off sob that trails off into terrifying silence. The girl slumps in her restraints as soon as the machine is turned off, eyes closed and head lolling back against the metal headpiece. Sam still has his weapons drawn, prepared to disable any potential threats, and Steve nearly jumps out of his skin with the chair’s restraints snap away with a loud _click_.

Bucky is already there when the chair starts to move on its own, going from being tilted back like a dentist’s chair to something more upright. The girl is half-naked, wearing a bra but no shirt, and Steve has never cared less about nudity in his entire life. Bucky catches her when she slumps out of the chair, then lays her carefully down on the ground.

He kneels down next to the girl’s body, his eyes fixed on her slackened face. Carefully, he reaches forward and manoeuvres the shock guard out of her mouth as carefully as possible before tossing it aside. Bucky’s hands are shaking, Steve realizes, and he quickly jogs over to stand beside them, lets his shield fall to the ground.

“Wake up,” Bucky whispers, his voice rough and unsteady. He’s leaning over the girl and shaking her shoulders gently, so gently, and Steve can’t tell if he’s actually trying to do that or if he’s just trembling so hard he can’t help it. “Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake _up_ …”

Steve reaches into his pocket and pulls out his cell phone, is just about to snap at the whole room to tell him _what the hell the emergency number is in Russia_ when suddenly, abruptly, the girl opens her eyes.

The girl stares up at the ceiling blankly, vacantly, as though she is not aware of the trembling man gripping her shoulders so tightly Steve worries it might actually hurt her. She blinks – once, twice – and then very slowly turns her gaze so that she is looking right up at Bucky.

And her _eyes_ …

Her eyes make Steve shiver right down to his core, because there is absolutely nothing in them. There is no fear, no pain, not even anger. They are absolutely empty, devoid of any kind of human emotion.

She opens her mouth.

“Каково мое задание?” she asks, the words scraped out of her throat like sandpaper and _hollow_ somehow. Her eyes are vacant and staring and waiting to be filled with purpose, and Steve can tell the instant that Bucky registers her words because he goes absolutely, perfectly still.

Steve has spent enough time with Natasha to pick up bits and pieces of Russian – _hello_ and _goodbye_ and _thank you_ , but he knows barely any full sentences. The only reason he knows this particular one is because of the nature of his and Nat’s old job; it’s one of the only full sentences in Russian that he knows.

_What is my mission?_

For a long moment, there is no sound except for the pained groans of technicians and scientists, the room filled with an absolute stillness that Steve is terrified to break. He can hear Sam swear softly after a moment, clearly understanding the situation from context.

Steve looks over at Bucky anxiously, trying to gather some idea of what’s going through his friend’s mind right now. Bucky is still all hunched over the girl, his hair in front of his eyes and his hands still gripping her shoulders, but he is not shaking anymore.

Slowly, carefully, Bucky lets go of her shoulders. He reaches up with his hand – his left hand, his _metal_ hand – and rests it very gently against her face. He gives her cheek a little pat, as though in some empty consolation. Then he pulls back, gets to his feet.

Without seeming to pause or think, Bucky strides over to the head scientist – with one with the host of badges pinned to his lab coat, the one all of his underlings are pointing at with shaking fingers – and _hurls_ him down so that the man is lying with his back on the floor, babbling what Steve is sure are excuses and pleas for mercy.

Steve swallows hard, but he does not move. Does not attempt to stop this from happening.

In a single fluid motion, Bucky straddles the man’s sprawled body, pulls back his hand, and brings his metal fist crashing down into the man’s face. Steve looks away before it connects, but the sharp cracking _squelch_ the fist makes on impact lets him know just what kind of effect the punch has had.

The man is still alive – Steve can hear him moaning, just barely still breathing – but Bucky doesn’t stop. He just keeps bringing his fist crashing down into the man’s face, over and over, blood and bone and cranial fluid splattering everywhere, just keeps bringing his fist down until what he’s hitting doesn’t even look like a person anymore.

It takes Steve a little while to realize that Bucky is _speaking_ while he does it, first muttering and then _shouting_ , words in a dozen languages that Steve doesn’t know but thinks he understands anyways, slamming his fist down over and over into the mess of gore that used to be a human being and _shrieking_ in agony, the pain in his voice so animalistic and feral and _raw_ that Steve can’t help but be reminded of the sound he made as he fell from the train all those years ago, plummeting down into the snowy abyss.

Bucky just keeps screaming until he runs out of things to say, until the words trail off in a strangled cry and he half-collapses over the dead scientist, metal arm slick with blood to the elbow and his long hair a mess in front of his eyes and his whole body shaking so violently it looks as though he might actually pass out.

To his surprise, Sam gets to him before Steve does. Walks over to where Bucky is still straddling the body and, apparently not caring that this Bucky just pummelled a man to death on the ground in front of him just _seconds_ ago, slowly lowers his weapons to the ground. Sam walks over to Bucky, kneels down next to him. Blood immediately seeps into the fabric of his pant legs, but Sam doesn’t even seem to notice.

“Hey, man,” says Sam quietly, comfortingly. “Hey, s’all right. It’s all right. We got her out.” He pauses, eyes flicking to Steve and holding his gaze for a second before returning to Bucky again. “We got both of you out.”

Sam keeps talking, murmuring nonsense words. And then – as though the action itself isn’t tremendously, unspeakably dangerous for him – Sam reaches up and carefully places a hand on Bucky’s shoulder.

And instead of lashing out, Bucky just… nods. It’s not much, just a broken little movement that’s barely more than the smallest incline of his chin. Then he’s shaking so hard he can’t even do that anymore.

Bucky shakes, and shakes. He shakes when Steve finally manages to pull him off the scientist’s shattered body, and he shakes when a HYDRA-purged SHIELD splinter cell from Moscow touches down in a jet outside to clean up their mess and get the girl the medical attention she needs. He shakes when Steve and Sam get him back to the hotel, and he shakes when Steve takes him into the shower and washes him clean, and he shakes when Steve finally settles him into bed.

He shakes until he drops off into the deepest, longest sleep Steve’s seen him have since before he went off to war.

When Bucky wakes up in the morning, there’s a measure of peace in his eyes that Steve doesn’t remember being there the night before.

 

 

\---

 

 

**Two:  
(Seven Months After)**

 

They’ve only been back in D.C. for a few weeks, and already Steve can see how being cooped up is starting to weigh heavily on Bucky’s shoulders.

They’re living in a different apartment than the one Steve had when everything went down before, partly because the old place had been so badly shot up and partly because Steve hadn’t been confident they could ever find and purge all of the bugs SHIELD had hidden inside. But D.C. is where Peggy is, and Sam, and Steve isn’t quite ready to be without either of those people just yet if he doesn’t have to.

He got the place set up before he and Sam left for Eastern Europe, even though Steve himself mostly lived out of Sam’s spare bedroom in the weeks after he got out of the hospital. It had been useful then as a place to store his rather meagre belongings, and when they arrived back home a few weeks ago with a badly shaken but docile Bucky in tow it had been a relief to have somewhere to set up camp. Sam moved back into his old house and Steve and Bucky took the apartment.

It’s a nice enough place; hardwood floors and off-white walls and much closer to Sam’s neighbourhood than Steve used to live. It’s bigger than any apartment he and Bucky have ever shared before, that’s for damn sure. It has two bedrooms, for one thing, something Steve has been conditioned to think of as a luxury in itself.  (Sam mercifully hadn’t commented when Steve specifically went looking for a place with two bedrooms in the days after he got out of the hospital, and Steve hadn’t brought it up either.)

Steve rather suspects that even if he lives for another hundred years, he will still never be able to pay Sam back for everything he’s done for him these past few months. It’s not even a question, really; just a fact that hovers at the back of Steve’s mind. He owes Sam too much for things to ever, _ever_ be square between them, and Steve is just going to have to spend the rest of his life slowly and patiently making it up to him.

“Hey,” comes Bucky’s voice, suddenly in front of him where he hadn’t been before, and Steve just about jumps out of his skin. He fumbles the pencil he was sketching with absent-mindedly a moment ago, his head snapping up just in time to see Bucky wince. “Sorry,” says Bucky quietly. “Didn’t mean to spook you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” says Steve, forcing a smile and ignoring the undignified way in which his heart is pounding in his chest. Bucky’s so _quiet_ when he walks now, but Steve never wants to admit out loud that he finds it unsettling. “What d’you need?”

Bucky’s mouth twitches in what is supposed to be a smile, but it doesn’t quite manage to reach his eyes. His hair is still long and uneven, falling all the way down to his shoulders now, but it’s clean and soft-looking in a way Steve hasn’t seen if for a very long time. He doesn’t wear socks in the house, and Steve always thinks he looks strangely vulnerable with bare feet. Their old apartment had run so cold that big woolly socks were a necessity practically year-round.

Bucky holds up a beat-up copy of one of the slew of John Grisham books Steve got him from the library – _The Racketeer_ , Steve reads – and shrugs his shoulders a little.

“Finished this one,” Bucky explains unnecessarily, putting it down on the table right next to Steve’s sketchpad. “What should I read next?”

There is a pause, then, because god _damn it_. Steve had really hoped they were over this particular hurdle.

“I don’t know, Bucky,” says Steve helplessly. He’s trying for ‘patient’, but instead the words just come out sounding strained. He shrugs a little awkwardly. “Whichever you want to read next, I guess?”

Bucky wrinkles his nose at him for a moment before nodding.

“Yeah, okay,” says Bucky, neutral and even, as though it’s not a big deal.  Backing down from an argument with him in a way Steve _knows_ he never would have done back in the day.

Steve watches him go as Bucky pads back into the living room, trying to steal a glance at the shelf to see which book he’s going to choose. He feels his heart sink ever-so-slightly for a half second when Bucky automatically grabs the first book on the shelf without bothering to read any of the blurbs on the back, padding silently across the room and settling back onto their couch. He flips the book open dutifully, giving the task the same level of commitment and fixation that the Winter Soldier would give a target, and begins to read.

Steve’s phone vibrates on the table next to him – probably Nat, she’s been back in town for a few days now – but he doesn’t look at it just yet.

The problem is that Bucky just doesn’t seem to know what to _do_ with all the free time he has nowadays. He likes music all right when Steve is the one to put it on, but won’t bother to listen to it if it’s only him in the room. The same goes for television and movies. If Steve puts something on, he’ll obediently sit and watch whatever it is without comment – but no matter how many times Steve tells him that he can watch anything he likes, he never bothers if it’s just for him.

Since they’ve decided by mutual agreement that Bucky should steer clear of the internet for a little while longer, books had seemed like the obvious solution. It’s worked, to a point. Steve picked out two dozen mystery novels from the library – the closest thing to the old pulp mystery magazines that Bucky used to read that he can find – and Bucky’s spent most of the past three days sitting on the couch reading.

It’s not something Bucky ever would’ve done before, though. Pulp magazines and the occasional paperback had been an infrequent way to pass a slow evening for the old Bucky, not a primary source of entertainment.

All of it has combined to make Steve tremendously aware of just how much of Bucky’s old life used to be oriented around _going out_ : working at the garage, saving up money to take pretty girls on dates. To the pictures and to the fair and to dance halls and all the while dragging Steve along, hellbent on getting him set up with _the right girl, Stevie, all we have to do is find you the right girl_ while Steve kept his mouth tight shut and his eyes determinedly on his date _._

The nights they would spend at the bar when they had the money. Just the two of them talking about nothing and everything until it was so late Steve knew he would be exhausted in the morning, until Steve was so tired would stop trying to push down the warmth in his chest whenever he looked at his best friend. 

The thing is, Steve wouldn’t mind the change – wouldn’t mind it if Bucky decided he liked staying in now, that going out just wasn’t his style anymore. Bucky had been very clear with Steve before, had made sure Steve understood that he might never be able to be the same man he was before he fell, and Steve had taken that to heart. He doesn’t expect Bucky to be the exact same person he was before, he really doesn’t.

The problem is that he _knows_ that Bucky’s acting this way for Steve’s sake instead of his own. Trying to be docile, to follow orders. To be whoever he thinks Steve wants him to be, and that just isn’t going to work for either of them.

The incident in Volgograd shook Bucky up something bad, and ever since there’s been a _restraint_ about him, a cautiousness and hesitance and unwillingness to make his own choices.

Steve would never admit it out loud, but it’s starting to drive him up the wall.

If he’s being completely honest with himself, too, Steve isn’t really cut out for this type of thing either. Neither of them have ever been idle a day in their lives, before the war or during or after. There’s so much Steve can do in the face of a threat, so much he can accomplish when he has a goal in his head and a plan to achieve it.

He feels useless, right now. Has no idea how to move forward, how to help, how to be what Bucky needs him to be.

Half-conversations and scraps of information had been enough when they were chasing each other through Eastern Europe; Steve had been out of his mind with joy to see Bucky showing any signs of regaining his memory at all, had been willing to stay silent and not push it if that was what it took to keep Bucky from bolting. In such close proximity, though, Steve thinks the silence and tension is starting to get to both of them.

Steve _wants_ to be a good friend, to be selfless and strong and endlessly patient. To be confident that he’s making the right choices, doing the right things.

Mostly he just feels helpless instead. Helpless and useless and like he can’t stop screwing up, and it’s not helping him feel like they’re making any progress. 

_There’s no manual for this, man,_ Sam told him once, shrugging his shoulders and looking at Steve with a far too understanding look in his eyes. As though all of this was somehow too familiar and unfathomable at the same time. _All you can do is keep going; to wait and see what he needs you to do. You’re doing the best you can._

On days like today, with his insides tangled up and his mind buzzing with frustration that isn’t very nice and isn’t very fair, it really doesn’t feel like it. 

The two of them eat dinner mostly in silence that night, and Bucky dutifully goes to get ready for bed as soon as he sees Steve doing so. They go into their separate rooms and close the doors, and Steve feels a familiar flash of nostalgia for their old one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn.

Steve turns off the lights and crawls into bed, the covers cool and crisp against his skin, and feels guilty for feeling ungrateful until he finally drifts off to sleep.

 

It can’t be more than a few hours later when Steve jolts awake, a sudden transition from sleeping to wakefulness he’s never been able to shake since the war. His eyes fly open and he pushes himself up a little automatically, ready to scan the darkened room for threats.

There’s someone standing in the door.

Even with all the lights out and after only a few seconds of being awake, Steve recognizes the shadowed outline instantaneously.

“Bucky?” he asks, his whole body on edge, blinking as his eyes start to adjust to the dark. Bucky is wearing sleep pants and no shirt, pretty similar to what Steve is wearing. He can’t make out his face, but there’s a rigidity to the way Bucky’s standing that makes unease coil in the pit of his stomach. Steve licks his lips, blinks the sleep out of his eyes. “Did you have a bad dream?”

“You’re my mission.”

It’s Bucky’s voice, but there’s no question that it’s Winter Soldier saying it. Cold and hard and unforgiving, and Steve feels his whole body tense up.

“Hey,” says Steve quietly, _gently_ , pushing himself up into a kneeling position on the bed as slowly as he possibly can. Bucky doesn’t move, but he doesn’t relax either, and every one of Steve senses is screaming _danger_ at him. “Bucky, it’s me. It’s Steve.”

Instead, his mind is whirring. His shield is tucked under his bed and he’s fairly certain he can get to it in time; there are no guns in the house and Bucky’s still in his pyjamas, so he almost certainly hasn’t left to go find one. A quick glance down at Bucky’s hands shows that he isn’t even holding a knife. He still has the metal arm, and he’d be deadly even without it, but all of that requires proximity. It’s likely that he just woke up from a nightmare that was too vivid, too real, and Steve _prays_ it’s just a flashback and not a full slip back into the depths of his old programming.

Bucky made enough noise to wake him up. Didn’t _have_ to do that, has snuck up on Steve in his sleep before, which means that Bucky is either still in there somewhere or the Winter Soldier is badly shaken. Both of those things mean that Steve can almost certainly pacify him until he comes back to himself.

(It’s _until_ and not _if_ in his mind, because even with his blood pounding in his ears and preparing to reach for a weapon, Steve can’t even contemplate the alternative as an option.)

“I’m your friend, remember?” Steve tries again, raising his hands palm-out in a placating gesture. The air is cold on the bare skin of his chest, and he shivers. “I’m Steve Rogers. You’re Bucky Barnes. You don’t have to –”

“You’re my _mission_ ,” snarls the Winter Soldier, the words blistering with mindless rage, and as soon as he starts to charge Steve _shoves_ himself off the bed and scrabbles underneath it, reaching for his shield. His hand closes around cold metal just as the Winter Soldier’s fist collides with his face, and then everything falls away except for the pounding immediacy of the fight.

It’s inelegant, brutal. Closer to the fight on the helicarrier than the one on the causeway. Steve has enough leverage to kick the Winter Soldier off with his feet, and he strikes out with his shield when he tries to dart in for another attack. Steve’s just able to scramble to his feet before the Winter Soldier is in front of him again, lashing out with punches so fast he almost can’t block them in time.

Steve’s fighting defensively, doesn’t actually want to hurt Bucky before he comes back to himself, and it’s only a matter of time before the Winter Soldier takes advantage of that fact. He manages to knock the shield out of Steve’s hands with a move so quick that Steve can’t make it out – before he grabs Steve by the shoulders and _hurls_ him backwards into the wall.

He crashes into one of his bookcases, and he can _hear_ the wood splintering as it’s destroyed from the collision before he feels the breath get punched out of his lungs. He gasps for air and manages to duck aside just as the Winter Soldier’s whirring fist strikes the place he was just standing, crashing through the back of the shattered bookcase and leaving a sizeable hole in the drywall.

Steve darts forward and grabs the shield – _discarded, on the ground, he’s fighting erratically_ – and manages to get it up just in time to deflect the Winter Soldier when he charges him, sending him crashing down onto the bed a few feet away with such force that Steve can hear the resounding _snap_ as its sturdy frame cracks in half.

When the Winter Soldier stands up again, Steve can see that he’s flagging. His movement is too loose, too _sloppy._ Too unsteady on his feet.

“Bucky,” Steve tries, but the Winter Soldier just charges him again with a shout, sending them both crashing back into what might be a lamp and what might be a mirror, but leaves shards of glass cutting into his flesh all the same.

The Winter Soldier strikes out again, but his punches are growing weaker, the sounds he’s making less full of rage and more _desperate_ , choked-out exclamations of pain and escaping from his lips. Steve lowers his shield, and the Winter Soldier lands one last punch across Steve’s face before he falls to his knees, breathing hard and ragged and his head buried in his hands.

For a few long seconds neither of them speaks, the only sound in the room their heavy breathing. Swaying a little on his feet, Steve waits for a few moments to make sure Bucky isn’t going to get up again before he stumbles painfully over to the door, flicks on the light-switch, and winces as bright light floods the room.

For the first time, he can see just how much of a warzone his bedroom has become. Steve stands there for a moment, breathing hard and his heart still pounding in his throat. There’s broken furniture strewn across the ground and a number of sizeable craters in the wall, and shattered glass streaked with both their blood glitters all around the place where Bucky is kneeling on the ground.

Now that the light is on, he can see the way Bucky’s fingers are tangled and pulling at his own hair in a way that’s almost certainly painful. He’s rocking back and forth on his knees, too, muttering something under his breath that Steve can’t hear from the other side of the room. There’s a growing pool of blood beneath Bucky’s body – from the shards of glass digging into his knees, Steve realizes. He drops the shield with a _clang_ and stumbles over to his friend, tugging at Bucky’s shoulders as soon as he’s close enough to touch.

“Hey,” Steve mumbles, the words coming out thick because his mouth is already swelling. He tugs at Bucky’s shoulders again. “C’mon. Bucky, c’mon.”

“Shit,” he can hear Bucky hissing under his breath as he rocks back and forth. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, _shit_.”

“C’mon, get off the glass, okay?” Steve asks, trying to sound gentle but he’s mostly just tired, and he’s very much relieved when Bucky nods after a few moments and lets himself be guided away.

The bed’s snapped clean in two so they can’t sit there, so instead they collapse on the floor next to it. There isn’t too much debris there, and it’ll do until they can get their breath back and figure out what to do next.  Bucky’s still all curled in on himself, and Steve tries to reach up to put his hand on his shoulder. The way his friend jerks away lets him know that he doesn’t want to be touched right now, though, and Steve lowers his hand to his side. He can see that there’s blood steadily seeping through the knees of Bucky’s pyjama pants, but he knows that right now isn’t the moment to bring it up.

“Shit,” Bucky chokes out again, and to Steve’s horror the waver in his voice makes it sound as though he’s close to crying.

It’s not a sound Steve’s heard that much of, all things considered. Not since they were kids. Steve can count on one hand the number of times he’s seen Bucky cry as a grown man. It makes something ache deep in his chest.

“Shit, Steve, I’m so fucking sorry,” says Bucky, his voice thick and cracking as he tries to get the words out. “I don’t… I don’t know why I…” he trails off when he shudders so hard he can’t speak for a moment. “I’m so fucking sorry,” he says again with finality, head hanging low, his hair obscuring his face.

And the thing is – the really goddamn ridiculous thing is – the fact that he sounds more like Bucky Barnes in this moment than he has since that day on the train, all those years ago. He sounds like _Bucky_ in a way that he hasn’t since he became the Winter Soldier, and even though they’re bloody and aching and currently collapsed in a heap on the floor, Steve feels a mangled little flash of hope flare in his chest.  

“S’okay,” says Steve reassuringly, trying not to let on the fact that his body is currently rediscovering every ache and pain the adrenaline’s been covering up until now. He feels like one enormous bruise, but none of that matters in comparison to how Bucky’s doing right now. In comparison to the sight of his best friend sounding so broken but also so much like _him_. “S’okay, Buck. Don’t worry ‘bout it. Had to happen eventually.”

The laugh Bucky barks out at that is more than a little hysterical.

“Did it?” he asks, voice high and unsteady. He takes a shuddering breath. “I ain’t getting better,” he says after a pause, and Steve feels his entire body seize up in concern. Bucky’s hands tighten around himself. “Y’hear me, Steve? It’s been so long and I ain’t getting better.”

“You _are_ ,” Steve insists, but Bucky shakes his head roughly. He gestures at the room around them as though the destruction of it speaks for itself.

“I’m not,” says Bucky quietly. He’s staring into space, now. Steely blue eyes fixed on something in the distance Steve can’t see. “I thought I was okay, before. I wasn’t… I wasn’t Bucky Barnes. But I wasn’t _him_ either.” He swallows, letting out a shaky breath. “It was easier, then. Like all of it had happened to someone who wasn’t me.”

He rubs at his eyes with his hand – the real one, the flesh and blood one – scrubbing away the dampness there before he lets out a dark huff of laughter. “Now, though. I can’t… _do_ this anymore. It’s all… it’s _right there_ , all the time. At least when I was numb I was _okay_ , y’know? It’s so much _worse_ now, Steve, why is it so much _worse_?”

Steve contemplates this for a moment, tilting his head back against the mattress and staring up at the ceiling. He lets his mind run over Bucky’s words, thinks hard about the best way to respond to it.

“I think…” Steve starts after a moment, still trying to gather his thoughts together. He frowns. “I think sometimes that’s how it works. You feel worse before you get better.” He hesitates for a moment before continuing. “When I first woke up here, I… was pretty low. It had been decades for everyone else, but to me it was… days. Weeks.”

Steve turns his head to look at Bucky. “I was still raw from losing you, you know that? Still torn up. You and Peggy and the Commandos and everyone, but at least they got to live their lives. You…” He huffs out a humourless laugh. “I failed you. You were my longest friend, the most important person in my life, and it was my fault that you fell.”

“Shut up!” Bucky snaps at him, and Steve startles at the ferocity in his voice. There’s life in Bucky’s eyes again, but there’s fury there too. “Shut the fuck up, that was _not_ your fault.”

“I know that,” says Steve, even though he really _doesn’t_ , holds up his hands in surrender. His knuckles are already swollen and purpling, and he’s going to have to check both of them for sprained fingers before they actually go back to bed. “I know that now. But at the time…” He shakes his head. “It got bad, Buck. Real bad. I was numb, and then I was low. For a while there, I don’t know if I could’ve told anyone why I bothered sticking around at all.”

Bucky is staring at him in unmasked horror, now. As though the idea of Steve – _Steve Rogers_ , that dumb kid from Brooklyn who never backed down from a fight – giving up is actually too painful for him to contemplate.  Steve shrugs.

“In the end, I had to live through it in order to get to the other side. Had to hit rock bottom before I could start putting myself back together again.” He can feel a small but genuine smile tugging at the corner of his swollen mouth. “And in the end, it worked out, didn’t it? I hung in there, put myself back together. And I found you.”

Bucky gives a whole-body wince next to him, drawing in on himself. “Don’t look at me like that,” he says quietly, and Steve cocks his head to one side.

“Like what?”

“Like I’m… the goddamn answer to your prayers or something.” Bucky shakes his head. “The person you found isn’t… _me_. Not the me you remember. The one I can see in my head.” He huffs slightly, reaching up to shove some of his tangled hair out of his eyes. “Not even sure what you found is a person at all.”

Hesitantly, Steve reaches out a hand and slowly lowers it on to Bucky’s shoulder. His friend doesn’t draw back, doesn’t flinch. Even leans into the touch a little bit, and that’s a victory as far as Steve’s concerned.

“You’re a person,” Steve says, his voice shaking with the conviction he can feel filling up his chest, can feel right down to the core of him. “You are. And whatever person you are – whatever version of Bucky we end up with – is the person I want to stand beside.”

Both of them are silent for a while, letting the words hover in the air between them for a little bit. The skin of Bucky’s shoulder is cool under Steve’s hand, and when Bucky audibly shivers he realizes that both of them are sitting there shirtless in the middle of November. Steve reaches up and tugs one of the blankets off the foot of his bed – the whole room is basically trashed anyways, why bother standing on ceremony at this point – and Bucky nods in thanks when he wraps it around his shoulders.

They sit there for so long, shoulders brushing and breathing slowly going back to normal, that Steve assumes the conversation is over. Is just preparing to ask Bucky if he’s ready to head into the bathroom so they can see to their injuries when Bucky starts talking quietly beside him.

“I’m scared I’ll never get better,” says Bucky, his voice blank and neutral like the Winter Soldier’s even though what he’s saying is all Bucky. He’s staring straight ahead, frowning a little, hair falling into his eyes. He pauses for a few moments before continuing. “That I’m always going to be like this. Fractured. Able to slip back at any second.”

Steve nods silently for a moment – before throwing the towel in, because as long as they’re talking about this, he might as well be honest.

“I’m scared I’m doing this all wrong,” Steve admits, just as quiet. Bucky turns to look at him, surprise evident on his face. There’s a bruise blooming along his nose, and Steve suspects it might have been broken during the struggle. With their capacity for healing it should be mostly cleared up by tomorrow, but for now it makes him look frailer than he actually is. “That I’m gonna mess you up worse than you were before.” He laughs, can feel a humorously pained expression pulling across his face. “I have no clue what I’m doing, Buck.”

Bucky laughs, swiping a hand over his forehead.

“You and me both, kid,” Bucky admits, letting out a long huff of air. “Guess not much has changed, then, after all.” He slowly pushes himself to his feet, wincing a bit and glancing down at the blood-soaked legs of his pyjamas as though noticing them for the first time. “Huh. Guess we’d better go get cleaned up, eh?”

Steve snorts out a laugh, nods – and is about to pull himself up onto his feet as well when a metal hand suddenly comes into his line of vision. It’s palm-up, an invitation, and Steve doesn’t hesitate before reaching out and taking his hand.

He lets Bucky help him to his feet before they both stumble off into the bathroom, flicking off the lights and leaving the disaster that is Steve’s bedroom for tomorrow.

 

\--

 

The damage is, unsurprisingly, extensive.

Bucky joins him at the breakfast table the next morning with a resigned slump to his shoulders, his long hair tied back and a guilty expression on his face and a nose that looks like it was broken a week ago instead of six hours ago. He eats his cereal with his right hand, keeps his metal arm below the table and determinedly avoids Steve’s eyes.

When Steve gets up and puts on a jacket and hoodie to head out to the hardware store – to buy drywall and a sander and whatever else they might need to repair several enormous holes in the wall – he hesitates when he gets to the door.

_To hell with it_ , he thinks, and walks back into the living room. Bucky is obediently sitting on the couch, about halfway through the library book he started yesterday.

“Hey,” Steve starts, steeling himself up, fully prepared to back down if this turns out to be a terrible idea. “Do you wanna come out with me today?”

With a start, Bucky’s head snaps up. He stares at Steve with a deer-caught-in-the-headlights expression on his face, then glances uncertainly down at his book before raising his gaze to Steve again.

“Last night – ” Bucky begins, but Steve cuts him off.

“I don’t think keeping yourself cooped up inside is helping anything,” says Steve, shrugging his broad shoulders and shifting awkwardly. “Besides, if anything goes wrong – if you start to worry about flashing back – I’ll be there to keep you under control.” He exhales sharply. “It’s not up to me, though. It’s up to you.”

Because they’ve been cooped up in this apartment for weeks now after months on the run, with groceries delivered to the door and Sam their only occasional visitor. Because the past seven decades of Bucky’s life have consisted of either being on a mission or being trapped in some lab or cryo chamber somewhere. Because Bucky’s unstable and shaken and recovering and _not okay_ , but he’s still _Bucky_. 

Because Bucky’s had his choices taken away for seventy years, and he deserves to be able to make them now more than ever.

It takes a long time for Bucky to respond, and when it finally happens it isn’t anything dramatic. There is no shining grin that lights up his whole face, no lessening of tension in his shoulders, nothing special to commemorate the moment of being anything particularly significant. Instead, he gives his shoulders a kinda half-shrug.

“I could go out, I guess,” Bucky acquiesces with a small nod, stuffing a bookmark between the pages just a bit too eagerly as he gets to his feet. “I’ll just… get some shoes.”

It’s the first time he’s gone outside for anything other than a mission in seventy years.

They go to the hardware store, and complain about the weather when it starts to rain, and spend most of the day picking up broken glass and doing a bad job spreading drywall compound.

It’s a good day, all things considered.

 

 

\--

 

 

**Three:  
(Eight Months After)**

 

Some days, Bucky is so very much like _himself_ that it’s difficult to remember there’s anything wrong in the first place.

Not like he was before the war, exactly: that cocky smile never dazzled quite so brightly after he shipped out. After he learned how to kill, how to do what was necessary to survive. These days, Bucky being himself is closer to what he was like during the war – in London during leave, or with the Commandos after. Hardened and determined and fraying a little around the edges but still able to get the job done; still able to slap a smile on his face and pretend like everything was okay even when the world fracturing around him.

On those days, he and Bucky go running with Sam until all three of them are so winded it hurts to draw breath. They go out to see the city, to go the pictures, to eat at restaurants they never would’ve been able to afford before. One night, they even go out and meet Natasha for slightly stilted drinks. They stay in and watch television, or play cards, or reminisce about the old days.

They carefully edge around all of the memories Bucky’s regaining of his time as the Winter Soldier; they’ll talk about it, Steve knows, but now isn’t the time. For now, Bucky is hell-bent on remembering his life with Steve, confirming half-remembered details and sharpening the out-of-focus picture inside his head. They give each other shit and make fun of the strange new world around them, and it’s more than Steve ever dared to believe he could have again.

Of course, there are bad days too.

There are days when Bucky wakes up hard-faced and stony, when the only words he can speak are insults spat out in languages Steve doesn’t know; when his hand clenches on the handles of knives and around blunt objects, and he has to squeeze his eyes closed and breathe heavily until the urge finally passes. Days when he wakes up screaming and snarling and lashing out, memories of something that Steve can’t even imagine still lingering in front of his eyes.

He once slammed Steve up against the wall, metal arm whirring and terror in his eyes, when Steve didn’t announce himself before coming up behind him and clapping a hand on his shoulder. Once fired two shots at Nat when she let herself in without knocking, something she wouldn’t allow him to apologize for since she insisted in was her own fault.

None of those things are quite as awful, though, as the days when Bucky goes blank.

“Hey, buddy,” says Steve softly, setting down a steaming mug of tea on the coffee table in front of where Bucky is sitting. It’s a special blend that Bruce sent over a few weeks ago, and the steam wafting from the mug smells like smoke and lavender and a few other ingredients that Steve can’t identify.

Bucky doesn’t seem to see it – but then, Steve isn’t really sure if Bucky sees anything when he gets like this. He’s sitting on the couch wearing one of Steve’s hoodies and a pair of sweatpants, arms in his lap and bare feet resting on the ground. He’s staring into space, face slack and empty and almost _childish_ , not reacting to anything Steve says or does around him.

Sam says it’s normal behaviour, considering. That Bucky might be seeing things they can’t, or that going unresponsive like that is his way of blanking out memories that are too overwhelming for him to handle. He’s told Steve to _stay close, man, but don’t smother him when it happens_ ; to let Bucky come out of it on his own rather than forcing him out before he’s ready. Sam’s told him that _talking might help, if you want, but it’s hard to say_ ; that if Bucky ever stays like this for over half a day, to give him a call and he’ll come and see what he can do.

It doesn’t usually last too long; a few hours at most, and then Bucky usually starts to go back to normal.

Steve would never say so out loud, but it terrifies him when Bucky gets like this. More than the aggression and more than the glimpses of the Winter Soldier that sometimes flare up to the surface, because there’s a part of Steve’s brain that always worries that Bucky will never come back when he falls into a state like this. That his friend is gone for good this time, and there’s nothing but a hollowed-out shell left in his wake.

Steve settles carefully into the armchair across from the couch, his own mug of tea in his hands, keeping his eye on Bucky and trying to see if there are any noticeable changes in his friend’s demeanour.

There’s no change; Bucky just keeps staring straight ahead, his hair pulled back in a loose ponytail and his lips too red against his pale skin. Silent and still and his face empty of any kind of emotion, a mindless drone waiting to be given a purpose.

With a little shake of his head, Steve takes a sip of his tea. It’s… strange. Nice, but strange. Bucky’s mug sits in front of him on the coffee table, untouched.

“Do you remember that time we went on a double date with that pair of sisters who were visiting from Chicago?” asks Steve, not expecting an answer. He leans forward so that his elbows are resting on his knees, forces a ghost of a smile. “God, I can’t even remember their names. We went out to the dance hall, and the band was _so bad_ that night.” He lets out an almost silent exhalation of dry amusement. “And then you wound up making out with both of them, one after the other ‘round the back of the hall. You came swaggering back in with _my date_ ’s lipstick smeared all over your lips, and yours slapped you one right in the face.”

Steve huffs out a laugh, runs a hand through his hair. “God, I was so steamed at you that night.” He pauses, staring into the liquid in his mug. “You made it up to me, though. You always did. I could never stay mad at you for long.”

Bucky hasn’t moved at all, is still staring blankly into space, and Steve really doesn’t know whether the talking is for Bucky’s sake or his own. He keeps doing it, anyways. Rambles on about _that time I came down with fever and you damn near got fired on account of all the days you spent at home lookin’ after me_ and _that time you convinced me to stay out until 4:00am on Saturday night with your buddies from the garage and I still dragged you in to church the next morning, and the only reason we didn’t throw up in the pews was because we were both still drunk off our heads._

Steve talks until his tea is all gone and his throat gets dry, standing up to grab a glass of water from the kitchen before starting another story. He talks until the sky outside gets dark outside and he has to turn on the lamp, the warm glow of the light making shadows play over Bucky’s still face.

He talks until he thinks it might be a good idea to start on dinner, is contemplating what he should make even as he’s telling the story about the time the Commandos infiltrated enemy territory in order to take out the HYDRA facility in Poland, when Bucky kinda _shifts_.

It’s just a little movement, a slight re-adjusting of his shoulders, but Steve feels his whole body slacken with relief nonetheless. He keeps talking – about the time one of the specialists helping out on an op made a snide comment about Gabe and Jim’s place on the squadron only to have Bucky’s fist make a personal acquaintance with his face, about the time they all nearly died because of a surprise attack in France – until Bucky starts to blink and shift a little bit more. Until his eyes start to focus and his brow starts to furrow. Until he blinks and looks up at Steve and Steve absolutely knows that Bucky can see him.

“Welcome back,” says Steve, a little smile curling at the corners of his mouth. Bucky stares at him.

“Hey,” says Bucky, but his voice is quiet and distant in a way that makes worry crease Steve’s forehead. He reaches forward and takes hold of the mug of tea Steve brought him hours ago – it must be stone-cold by now – and takes an uncertain sip.

“What is it?” Steve asks, tilting his head to one side.

Bucky frowns at him, seeming to think for a moment about the best way to put his thoughts into words. He’s silent for a very long time, stares down into the mug full of amber liquid without speaking for a few long minutes. Steve doesn’t rush him, just sits and waits for Bucky to gather his thoughts together.

Eventually, a crease appears in Bucky’s forehead. He licks his lips.

“… I don’t think he was a very good person,” says Bucky after a very long pause. He says the words slowly, frowning in concentration as though this is a very important conclusion to come to. Steve blinks at him uncertainly.

“Who wasn’t a good person?” asks Steve, but Bucky looks lost in thought again. He clutches the mug of tea slightly too tightly, and Steve is glad that he’s holding it with his flesh and blood hand rather than his metal one right now.

“After you rescued Bucky Barnes,” says Bucky, far-off and distant, and Steve feels something awful catch in his chest at the way he’s talking about himself. “When you rescued him from the HYDRA base.”

Bucky does this, sometimes. Not as much as he used to, back when they were taking out HYDRA bases in Eastern Europe together, but it still slips into his speech every once and a while. Will refer to himself – to Bucky Barnes, to _Steve’s_ Bucky, to the Bucky that existed before his fall from the train – as ‘he’.  As though the man Bucky sees in his memories is someone entirely separate from himself, a different person altogether. Steve licks his lips, nods to urge him to continue even though his stomach is coiled tight with tension. 

“It was when you got back to the camp. You were… _this_ , big as a barn all of a sudden. And he wanted to be proud, to be _grateful_ , but…” Bucky swallows, furrowing his brow. “He was devastated. You were healthy and happy, had a beautiful woman staring at you and everything. You had everything you’d ever wanted -- and the only thing Bucky Barnes could think was ‘what use am I to him now’.”  He blinks, then raises his gaze to meet Steve’s. His eyes are clouded over and his expression is still a little too slack, but there’s a kind of certainty in the way he’s talking.

“I don’t think he was a good person, Steve,” says Bucky, and something inside Steve quietly breaks.

“Don’t say that,” says Steve softly, feeling his jaw tighten and his hands start to clench. He shakes his head. “Don’t you dare say that about yourself, Buck.”

“He thought so at the time, too,” Bucky continues, as though that explains something. He narrows his eyes in concentration, his gaze sliding a little to the left of Steve’s head. “You were always good. You shone like the goddamn sun, even before the serum.” He shakes his head a little, and a strand of brown hair escapes from his ponytail. “You kept him good. That’s what he thought. You were finally happy and all he could think about was himself.”

“Selfish thoughts don’t make you a bad person,” says Steve, trying very hard to keep his voice even and calm. Getting upset won’t solve anything, won’t make Bucky feel any better about anything. “We all have them, Bucky.”

Bucky snorts. “Not you,” he says, and Steve almost wants to cry with how wrong he is. He bites his lip for a moment, weighing whether or not he should voice the thought that’s on his mind.

He’s never been one for running away from his fears. Steve takes a deep breath.

“Sometimes,” starts Steve, already wincing internally. He swallows, charging forward. “Sometimes I’m grateful for what happened to you.”

Bucky kinda… freezes. Stiffens. He looks at Steve sharply, confusion and uncertainty and the spectre of hurt evident on his face. Steve lets out a huff of breath.

“You went through hell, Bucky,” says Steve, because he may as well lay it all on the table at this point. “They broke you in ways no one was ever meant to be broken. They took away what belonged to you. Made you do horrible things.” He laughs humourlessly. “And sometimes, I’m grateful that it happened. Completely, selfishly _grateful_ because what you went through means I get to have you here with me now.” He lets out an unsteady breath, giving Bucky a sardonic look. “That’s worse than anything that might’ve been running through your head when you were fresh from being experimented on and your world had just been turned upside down. If you’re a bad person, Bucky, then I am too.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything, just kind of stares at him blankly, and neither of them speak for a long time. A silence stretches between them broken only by the tick-tick-tick of the clock hanging on the wall. Steve winces retroactively at the full horror of what he just confessed, but it’s too late to take it back now. It’s also true, god help him.

Without any warning, Bucky kinda… blinks. Something shifts in his face, just the most minor re-arrangement of his expression. He licks his dry lips, looks around them as though seeing the living room for the first time. After a while he looks over at Steve, catches his gaze for a long minute. They don’t speak, just sit and share a look, and eventually Bucky seems to come to some kind of conclusion.

 “All right,” Bucky sighs after a long pause, frowning almost comically as he stands up and stretches his back. It pops audibly when he twists to one side, and he winces. “All right, you win this round, Rogers. Guess even an idiot will say something smart if you let him keep talking for long enough.”

Steve laughs, caught off guard, and the sound that escapes his mouth is unexpected and loud. Bucky grins at him; it’s not a full grin, not a real one. But it’s close enough for now.

“Yeah, well,” says Steve, trying to sound flippant. “My rousing speeches have always been part of my charm.” Bucky snorts, then looks contemplative.

“God, I’m starving,” says Bucky – before giving Steve a sheepish look. “It okay if I leave the cooking to you tonight? Think I just want to go lie down in my room for a bit.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve smiles, getting to his feet and stretching as well. “Always an excuse for being lazy.” He shoots Bucky a little smile. “Go lie down, I’ll rustle something up.”

“Asshole,” says Bucky, but there’s a ghost of a smile on his face.

When Steve goes into the kitchen, the stark relief and the shaking in his hands and the adrenaline prickling at his skin makes their conversation feel more like winning a battle than anything else. He opens a few cans of soup with shaking fingers, stirs it all together in a pot on the stove and keeps an ear open for Bucky as he does.

 

 

\--

 

**Four:  
(Nine Months After)**

   
The doorbell rings, and Steve goes to answer it even though this isn’t actually his house. He pulls it open, a small grin already nudging at the corners of his mouth, and is rewarded with the sight of Natasha standing on Sam’s front door step.

“Hey, stranger,” says Natasha, smiling up at him with the kind of warmth he never would have thought her capable of when he first met her all that time ago. Her hair is a darker shade of red than he last saw it, shoulder-length and wavy and with a sweep of bangs across her forehead. She raises her eyebrows at him. “We gonna hug?”

“We’re gonna hug,” Steve confirms, nodding, before reaching out and pulling her into an only slightly-stilted embrace. It always shocks him, how small she feels in his arms. Whether it’s to give her a hug or pull her out of the line of fire, Natasha is so competent and capable and such a _big presence_ that it feels strange that all of who she is should fit into such a small frame. She hugs him back, a quick squeeze of affection, before they pull away.

“Barton says he’s sorry he can’t come,” says Natasha, giving Steve a _look_ when he offers to help her with her coat. He hangs the brown leather jacket up in Sam’s hallway cupboard, taking in her dark green shirt and black pants for the first time. She looks nice. She’s also holding a bottle of wine, clearly a gift for the host, and the sheer normalcy of this fact is enough to make Steve reel slightly inside. “He’s helping Maria Hill make contact with some people in private security he knows.”

Steve nods, tells her not to worry about it, and Natasha inclines her head down the hallway. There’s warm light and delicious smells emanating from the kitchen, and they can hear the calm murmur of Sam’s voice giving instructions. She raises her eyebrows again, and after a moment both of them continue on into the kitchen.

The sight of Sam and Bucky making dinner is so simultaneously banal and profoundly extraordinary it’s actually unnerving. There’s a large pot of rice simmering on the stovetop and another pot full of slowly-steaming vegetables, and Sam has a dishcloth thrown casually over his shoulder as he stands over a large saucepan. He’s using a pair of tongs to flip chicken thighs in some kind of tasty-smelling brown sauce, talking consistently as he does so.

“The trick is to get the soy sauce and vinegar to reduce enough that the chicken broth will make it into a nice sauce when we add it in later,” Sam is saying as they walk into the room, comfortable and laid-back in the kitchen as always. Steve always finds it pleasant, watching him cook. It’s satisfying in the way it’s always satisfying to watch someone who knows how to do their job well, and Sam makes cooking look as easy as breathing.  “We’ll add the cornstarch later to thicken it up, but for now it’s doing just fine.”

The whole idea of a dinner party is strangely foreign to Steve, whose own mother could barely afford to feed the two of them let alone other family or friends. When he and Bucky lived together they were bachelors to the core, and neither of them ever got the chance to get married and settle down and start inviting people over for dinner or drinks or whatever it was married couples did back then.

It feels weirdly _grown-up_ to Steve, as though all of them are playing at being normal adults just a little bit, and he’s probably far too old at this point to be thinking things like that.

Sam glances over his shoulder as they come into the kitchen, shooting both him and Natasha a charming smile. “Hey, Nat,” says Sam happily, before turning his attention on Bucky, who currently appears to be chopping vegetables. “How are those onions and mushrooms coming, big guy?”

Bucky seems to start a little at the nickname, but not, Steve thinks, in a bad way. He finishes cutting the last mushroom and gathers up the cutting board and knife in his hands. “Done,” he says, glancing over at the stovetop. “Do you want –?”

“Right in there,” instructs Sam with a nod, and Bucky uses the knife to sweep the contents of the cutting board into the pan with the chicken. Sam gives the contents a little stir, and then settles a lid on top of it.

“Smells good, Sam,” Steve adds, something warm and pleasant thrumming in the base of his stomach. More than getting to see Bucky interact with someone who isn’t him, it really is nice to see Sam and Bucky getting along. Bucky had been so strange around Sam, at the beginning.  Had acted touchy and aggressive, even outright ignoring him a few times, and thank god Sam has the patience of a saint.

Whatever it was, Bucky seems to have worked through it now, because they’ve been getting along just fine for months. Sam grins at him.

“Yeah, well. I had a pretty good sous-chef.”

“Don’t know about that,” says Bucky, piling the dishes over by the sink. “I can say with complete honesty that I don’t remember the last time I cut a vegetable.”

“Hey, Bucky,” says Natasha quietly, in that way she does when the two of them are in the same room together sometimes. Steve doesn’t know if it’s because of what she told him – Odessa, the nuclear engineer, the Winter Soldier shooting his mark through her – but Natasha sometimes gets like this around him. Quiet, careful. Watching his movements, but not exactly as though she’s waiting for him to attack. More like she’s trying to extract information out of him just by looking, but he isn’t giving her what she wants to know.

Steve thinks that if she did want to talk about it, she would tell him. No point speculating into someone else’s life where they don’t want him poking around.

“Hey Natasha,” Bucky replies, running a hand distractedly through his hair. He asked Steve to cut it a week ago, and it’s obvious that he still isn’t used to the length. It’s a little shaggier than he used to wear it back in the day, but nowhere near as long as it was when he was the Winter Soldier. He’s wearing a grey button-up shirt and a pair of khaki pants that are just a little more high-waisted than the style these days.

He almost looks like a vision right out of one of Steve’s memories except for the metal hand poking out from his left sleeve, the slightly too-sunken look around his eyes.

“So,” Natasha continues, walking over to one of Sam’s kitchen drawers and opening it without asking. She pulls out a corkscrew – right in one, and Steve doesn’t know how she _does_ that, because Nat’s only been in Sam’s kitchen one or two times before – and begins to uncork her bottle of wine. “You boys didn’t cook much when you lived together back in the day?”

Steve opens his mouth to reply, but Bucky snorts loudly before he can say anything. He raises his eyebrow at his friend. There’s laughter around the edges of Bucky’s eyes.

“From what I can remember,” says Bucky dryly, his mouth twitching slightly as he speaks, “we mostly survived on baked beans, tinned soup, and Melba toast.” He pauses – then glances over at Steve, and it takes him a half-second too long to realize that Bucky is looking for confirmation.

He nods quickly. “Corned beef fritters and boiled potatoes if we were feeling extra fancy,” he adds neutrally, and he can actually _feel_ Natasha roll her eyes.

“ _That_ is disgusting,” says Natasha with finality, pulling the cork out of the wine bottle with a definitive _pop_. Sam nods emphatically as he pulls a container of chicken stock out of the fridge.

“I can pretty much promise tonight’s fare will be better than boiled potatoes,” Sam grins, unscrewing the container and pouring the stock into the pan.

Bucky laughs, an unexpected and harsh sound. They all turn to look at him, and he waves a hand dismissively.

“Sorry,” he chokes out, letting out an undignified snort followed by what almost sounds like a _giggle_. “Sorry,” he apologizes again. “I just remembered – Steve, do you remember Spam?”

With a groan, Steve slumps into one of Sam’s dining room chairs. Natasha hands him a glass of wine, which Steve doesn’t actually like all that much and certainly won’t get him drunk, but it seems to be the polite thing to do.

“ _Spam_ ,” Steve moans, horrified and shaking his head. “Oh, god, Spam. I’d forgotten about Spam. In the army, it was _everywhere_. Couldn’t get away from Spam.”

“Spam with lunch, Spam with dinner—”

“— Spam and eggs for breakfast—”

“Eating Spam cold on the road with the Commandos,” Bucky shudders, an appalled expression on his face. “On days when we couldn’t have a campfire and you had to eat it whole out of the tin, dripping wet and everything.” The pained grimace on his face is so familiar that Steve starts laughing all over again. Bucky narrows his eyes. “Shut up, Rogers, it was just as disgusting as you remember it being.”

“Dude,” says Sam, his voice full of a mixture of disgust and amusement as he pokes at the vegetables. “I might actually vomit right now. That is _vile_.”

Natasha is looking between him and Bucky with a slightly unsettled expression on her face, and it hits Steve just how unusual it is for he and Bucky to be talking like this in front of other people. For he and Bucky to be talking like this at _all_ , for that matter.

For a strange moment, Steve realizes how unaccustomed these people must be to seeing him laugh. It makes something painful clench in his chest before unclenching again, the look on Bucky’s face too much right now for him to be very melancholy about anything.

“Nah, though,” says Bucky, leaning against the countertop to steady himself against the chuckling. Natasha hands him a glass of wine, which he accepts with a nod of thanks. “Steve, shut up, you know what was worse than Spam?” He pauses for dramatic effect. “ _Spam knock-offs_.”

Steve stares at him, and Natasha snorts in an unladylike manner at what is undoubtedly an expression of pure horror on his face.

“You know they still make it, right?” asks Sam, raising his eyebrows at both of them. He pokes the rice with a knife to check and see if it’s done as he speaks, then stirs the contents of the pan in a way that says dinner is almost ready. Bucky gives him such a wide-eyed look that Steve snorts helplessly again.

“They still make _Spam_?” Bucky asks incredulously, letting out a little huff of laughter. “Why the fuck would anyone still make –”

What happens next happens so quickly that Steve isn’t able to make proper sense of it until afterwards.

Although Sam owns the whole house, he rents out the self-contained upstairs to a young couple that Steve has seen a few times but has never actually introduced himself to. As the four of them are standing in the kitchen, there is a loud _bang_ from the floor above – something Steve will later realize was probably one of the upstairs neighbours dropping something heavy on the ground.

He doesn’t have time to process that now, though, because almost as soon as the _bang_ rings out, there is someone barrelling violently into him, the _crash_ of a rock-hard body tackling him off the dining room chair. Steve hears his wine glass shatter against the floor, hears someone shout in surprise as his back collides with the ground so hard all the wind gets knocked out of him, a heavy weight settling on top of him.

Steve chokes in a breath for a moment, opens his eyes so that he can fight if he has to – and blinks at the sight above him.

They’re half-underneath Sam’s dining room table, and Bucky is crouched on top of him like some kind of feral animal. He’s tense and thrumming and breathing hard and looking fully prepared to claw someone’s throat out if they come too close. His newly-cut hair is just long enough to hang down in front of his eyes. Steve doesn’t know how he managed it in the midst of such a knee-jerk response, but at some point before he tackled Steve to the ground Bucky must have grabbed one of Sam’s kitchen knives. He’s holding it clenched in one hand, now; completely steady and unshaking, ready to lash out and attack anyone who gets too close.

And Bucky’s trying to _protect_ him, Steve realizes belatedly, blinking up at him in complete shock. Too caught off guard to say anything, because Bucky heard _loud_ and thought _gun_ and apparently his first instinct isn’t to try to hurt Steve when that happens anymore.

It’s to try to keep him safe instead.

He can hear Natasha murmuring something soothingly in Russian, can hear Sam’s steady stream of “hey man, it’s okay, you’re safe now, it’s okay” in that tone that speaks of far too many years of personal experience and familiarity with this kind of reaction.

Bucky doesn’t move, though. Doesn’t waver. Just says rooted on top of Steve, solid and hard and unmoving, the knife clenched in his hand as he stares unblinkingly at Natasha and Sam – and his friends, they’re his _friends_ now, even if it’s hard and difficult and not like a normal friendship might be – as though he does not recognize them.

“Bucky,” says Steve, his voice small and slightly wheezy from having the air knocked out of him. Bucky doesn’t move, doesn’t lower the knife, but he does glance down at him quickly. Just a split second of his gaze darting from the perceived threats to Steve and back again, visibly uncertain of what to do next. “Bucky, it’s okay.”

Sam starts trying a different tactic after that. “Bucky, Steve’s safe. We’re all safe here. No one’s going to hurt him, all right?”

And if Steve could see him from his current vantage point half underneath the table, he would give Sam a grateful look, because it’s only after he starts saying things along that line that Bucky slowly, almost imperceptibly, starts to relax.

As though he’s forcing himself to calm down muscle by muscle, Steve feels the tension in Bucky’s legs gradually start to ease away. After a while the horrible tension in Bucky’s core starts to relax, and after a few more minutes of Sam quietly murmuring encouragements he finally lowers the knife.

“Sorry,” Bucky chokes out, the tremor in his voice evident as soon as he starts speaking. He glances at his hand as though it belongs to someone else, then finally releases his grip around the hilt. It falls to the ground with a clatter, and Steve knows it’s Natasha who moves in to quickly kick it out of the way. Bucky shakes his head, and in that moment he looks less like the Winter Soldier than he looks the way Bucky did during the war, sometimes. He glances down at Steve again, then back up at the other two. “Sorry.”

“Hey, I meant it when I said don’t worry about it, all right?” says Sam, crouching down next to the table. He cocks his head a little to one side, and his body language is so relaxed that Steve knows that it must be artificial. “D’you wanna come out now?”

After a moment, Bucky nods. He crawls off of Steve with a guilty expression on his face that Steve tries to ease with lopsided smiles, by letting Bucky help him to his feet. With his hand reassuringly placed on Bucky’s shoulder, trying to steady him when he starts to curl in on himself.

It takes them about forty five minutes to get back to an almost comfortable place again, and Steve is completely blown away by Sam. Sam, who just keeps _talking_ , natural as breathing as he tidies up the broken wine glass and spilled wine and puts the food onto a low temperature to stay warm and lets Bucky sit in a chair and come back down to earth again. Keeps chattering easily to fill the silence and to be a distraction, treating the situation like it’s completely normal until it actually starts to feel that way again.

Natasha just sits there, quiet and still and adding a dry comment every once and a while, and Steve appreciates that almost as much.

Steve sits next to Bucky like a guard dog the whole time, a hand on his friend’s shoulder as his breathing returns to normal. After thirty minutes, Bucky isn’t shaking anymore. After forty five minutes, he’s managed to put some kind of impression of an easy grin on his face. It’s stiff and forced and not relaxed at all, but there’s a grain of truth in there that makes the tightness in Steve’s chest lessen, makes Steve nod in agreement when Sam declares that it’s time for dinner almost an hour later than was originally intended.

They sit at the table and eat, talking about anything and everything that isn’t the outburst. The food is good, and the company is better, and it all works out okay in the end.  

 

 

\--

 

 

**Five  
(Eleven Months After)**

Some days, the two of them try to piece together the Winter Soldier’s past.

It isn’t easy for a number of reasons. They have more information cobbled together from their jaunt across Eastern Europe than was in the original file, but all of it is still heavily redacted and unreliable at best, with years of data missing and several sections that Steve is almost positive have been fabricated entirely. There are gaps in that file as big as the gaps in Bucky’s memory, and trying to piece together the truth out of half-remembered flashes of memory and fragments of unreliable information is just about as difficult as it sounds.

It’s not exactly enjoyable, either. It makes Steve’s heart hurt, dredging up old atrocities. Being confronted with the reality of all the things Bucky had done to him, all the things his friend was forced to do. He hates how heavily the information weighs on Bucky’s shoulders, the way he gets quiet and still and distant after they chip away at the blockages in his mind and bring more memories rushing back to him. The way he curls in on himself, tucks his metal arm under the couch blanket so that he doesn’t have to look at it.

If it came right down to it, Steve would prefer they not delve into the Winter Soldier’s memories at all – except for the fact that he knows it’s something that Bucky needs. It’s a history Bucky feels he needs to know; part of his life and part of _him_ , no matter how badly Steve wishes it wasn’t.

On those days, they spend hours trying to reconcile Bucky’s own memories with the things written in – and the things left out of – the files on the Winter Soldier. Sometimes there are names and dates, locations and mission objectives; little kernels of information that make it easier to put together the pieces. Other times, all they have to go on are flashes: the glint of a sniperscope in the sunlight, white powder dissolving into a glass of water, thick green trees and a firing squad in the middle of nowhere.

On other days, they go out. For grocery shopping, for coffee, for drinks at the bar, for runs in the park with Sam. Steve still visits Peggy at her long-term care facility at least once a week now that things are a little more stable now. Bucky meets irregularly with one of Sam’s counsellor friends at the VA, with one of the old SHIELD doctors that Fury still trusts. Every once and a while Steve gets dragged away on HYDRA-related emergencies, and sometimes Bucky goes away for a few hours without explicitly saying where he’s going.

Natasha’s started taking Bucky along with her to a civilian gun range in town, something Steve had been staunchly opposed to before he saw the look on Bucky’s face when he came home after the first time. Pride and relief and _vindication_ , as though being trusted with a weapon was a step towards being normal again. As though he was reclaiming part of himself that had been taken away from him. 

Some days, people come to visit them. Bucky’s met every member of the Avengers at this point, which is good, and both Natasha and Sam have a key to their place. There are movie nights, every once and a while. Gatherings of people Steve can finally _breathe_ next to, now that Bucky’s a part of his life again. Now that he isn’t so devastatingly, cripplingly lonely that he doesn’t know how to be a normal person anymore.

Today, though, none of that is happening.

Today, life is quiet.

They’re sitting on the couch in their apartment, Steve propped up against a couch arm with a sketchbook on his lap and Bucky watching the television on low volume. For a long time, Steve is so absorbed in the flow of his pencil on paper that the rest of the world might as well not exist around him. He’s not drawing anything in particular, just letting his mind wander and sketching out whatever comes into his head: the Washington memorial from angles that people never seem to bother photographing, a hand that doesn’t belong to anyone in particular, sunlight pouring through the window of Peggy’s bedroom.

The spell passes when he runs out of room on the page. Steve looks up, blinking, at the brightness of the world around him. He glances over at the television. There are people in bright red, blue, and yellow costumes on the TV screen, wandering around in what looks like an empty quarry. He nudges Bucky with his foot.

“Hey,” says Steve, and Bucky looks over at him. He looks good; well-rested and properly fed for the first time in a long time, and Steve can’t help the little burst of surprised pleasure in his chest at the sight of him. “Whatcha watching?”

Bucky pauses whatever it is and leans forward to snatch a bright yellow DVD case off the coffee table. “Star Trek: The Original Series,” he reads out loud, glancing over at Steve and shrugging his shoulders. He’s wearing a pair of jeans and a white tank top that leaves the scarred flesh on his shoulder exposed, the line where metal meets flesh mottled with rippled skin and pock marks and scarring that never seems to fade even when every other wound on his body does.

Steve frowns.

“I think I was supposed to watch that,” he says, cocking his head to one side. “It any good?”

“It’s all right,” says Bucky, a little half-grin curling at the corner of his mouth. “Corny as hell, but I think you’d like it.” He snorts a little. “Apparently having a Russian character was controversial at the time. Cold War and everything.”

“Mm,” says Steve, smiling at this friend out of reflex. They never had a television in their apartment back in the day, of course, but Steve thinks this might be what if would’ve been like if they had.

 A thought occurs to him and Steve huffs out a laugh. “You know, sometimes I still can’t get my head around the fact that the Cold War was something that actually… _happened_ while I was under. Sprung up and dominated the world for forty years before ending again just as quick, and the _ideas_ that were being thrown around.” He shakes his head a little. “Mutually Assured Destruction – in what universe did someone ever think that was a bright idea?”

Bucky shrugs a little. “I was there for some of it. Didn’t make much sense at the time, either.” His eyebrows furrow. “Fought on both sides of it, too, which is… weird. The legendary Soviet operative, and I definitely remember putting down a few high-ranking Russians on American instruction.” He shrugs a little, staring a little past the television. “Guess HYDRA didn’t care all that much about the Cold War, either, as long as it kept things chaotic.”

And now Steve feels like about seven kinds of idiot. Wincing, he puts down his notebook and swings his legs over the edge of the couch, moves so that they’re sitting side-by-side.

“Sorry, Buck,” says Steve quietly. “I didn’t think.”

“Mmm?” asks Bucky, blinking a little before turning to look at him. He raises an eyebrow. “Steve, shut up, it’s fine. _I’m_ fine.” He laughs, but there’s something strained about it that puts Steve’s teeth on edge, makes him sit just a little bit straighter in his seat. “We can talk about 20 th century history without me curling up in a ball on the floor and rocking back and forth anymore, okay?”

“Okay,” says Steve, fidgeting a little in his seat. “Sorry,” he tries again, awkwardly this time. Something changes in Bucky’s expression.

“Did I used to be this bad, back in the day?” Bucky asks, a too-tight smile on his face. His hair is messy, without any product to keep it in place. It makes him look a little bit more rumpled when he shoves a hand through it.

It’s supposed to be a joke, Steve knows it is, but there’s something in the way he’s holding himself that makes Steve very wary of his answer.

“Probably worse,” Steve returns, but it’s a weak response at best.

It’s not the same situation and they both know it. Bucky’s protectiveness had always pretty much been about physicality; about dragging Steve out of whatever trouble he’d managed to get himself into and hadn’t been able to get himself out of again. Even when Steve was scrawny and dismissible when they were growing up, though, Bucky never treated him like someone to be pitied.

This is something else entirely. Sometimes Steve feels as though he’s worried about stepping on landmines, about saying the wrong thing or reacting the wrong way and blowing them all to hell as a result. It would be so much easier if there was an actual threat Steve could take down, a bully he could punch in the face and solve the problem in one go.

 “Look,” Bucky sighs, turning off the television and turning to face him a little more. There’s something strained in his face, his mouth a thin line and his jaw clenched tight. He seems to pause for a moment, thinking. “Look, Steve, what you’ve done for me... I can never repay you for it.”

“Bucky, you don’t –” Steve starts, but Bucky just glares at him.

“Let me finish,” he says, very quietly, and Steve shuts his mouth. Bucky takes a deep breath. “You brought me back when no one else could’ve done it, when I didn’t even realize there was anything in me to bring back. You’ve moved heaven and earth to help me, and I know it hasn’t been easy.” He hesitates, glancing up at Steve. “But what I need from you right now is for you to stop treating me like I’m going to break if you so much as look at me the wrong way.”

There is a beat. Steve nods hesitatingly, trying very hard not to think about all the times Bucky _has_ broken over the past few months. His shoulders feel tight, and he realizes that he’s been hunching in on himself throughout the conversation. He straightens up a bit, nodding again.

“I’m trying not to,” says Steve uselessly, and Bucky smiles at him in response.

“I know you are, pal,” Bucky replies, and for a second his voice is just as warm as Steve remembers it being. “Guess I’m the one with all the experience being an overprotective asshole, right?”

Steve lets out a sharp laugh at that, shaking his head. He tries to push down the vague sense of personal failure, replace it with relief and gratitude that Bucky is talking to him about this at all. It’s a hell of a lot more than he could have expected even a few months ago, and Steve will take progress where he can. 

“What is it you need me to do, Buck?” Steve asks, his hair falling a little bit into his eyes. He doesn’t have any product in it and he needs a haircut. He shoves it out of his eyes. Bucky tracks the movement of his hand with his eyes, seeming to grow a little more sombre next to him.  

For a moment, both of them are silent. Bucky’s staring at his hands in his lap, the metal of his left so much more eye-catching than the plain flesh of his right.

“I know things aren’t the same,” Bucky begins after a moment, his voice sounding a little far away. He snorts out a half-laugh. “Hell, I’m the one who told you that things couldn’t be. But… there are some things I want back, still. Things that we used to have before.”

“If this conversation ends with you demanding the right to make out with my dates behind dance halls, I don’t think I’m on board,” says Steve, surprised when it doesn’t make Bucky smile.

“Steve,” says Bucky, quiet and serious, and Steve frowns.

“Yeah?”

There is a beat – and then Bucky reaches up, metal arm sure and steady, to tuck some of Steve’s hair behind his ear.

Steve freezes.

“Bucky…” says Steve, suddenly dry-lipped and too rigid, and Bucky is looking at him in a way that makes something old and familiar and absolutely terrifying twist in the base of his stomach. He feels the cool metal of Bucky’s thumb graze over his cheek. Bucky’s eyes are dark and heated, and they keep on glancing down to linger on Steve’s mouth. He shivers.

When Bucky starts to lean in, Steve musters every ounce of his self-control and reluctantly pulls away. Bucky frowns at him, his hand stilling on Steve’s cheek. The look in his eyes is absolutely unreadable.

“Bucky, no, you’re – ” Steve swallows, shaking his head. The disappointment and loss feels like a physical lump in his throat, and part of him knows that he could just… let this happen. Could just let Bucky do what he wants and damn the consequences.

Steve knows he wouldn’t ever do that, though, because it would be cruel and unfair and not _real_ , anyways. He exhales sharply through his nose.

“I think you’re confused,” says Steve at last, stomach churning and words tasting bitter on his tongue. He can feel the heat rising in his face. “I think you’re remembering things wrong, because we weren’t – we never – ”

“We did,” says Bucky, low and dark and concerted and _intent_ in the way the Winter Soldier is intent, and Steve feels a heated lurch in his stomach that has nothing to do with being afraid.

“Not like that,” says Steve weakly, and his face is so hot it’s _burning_. Memories are flashing through his head with visceral swiftness; being pressed together in a too-small bed and Bucky’s voice whispering _what are friends for, right?_ and how _good_ it felt to be touched by someone other than himself. The confident touch of Bucky’s hand and his warm laughter in Steve’s ear, and Bucky’s encouraging words and touches when Steve would clumsily try to reciprocate.

It wasn’t something they did often – first when they were sixteen and then a few times after that, when they were drunk or Bucky was lonely or when both of them needed comfort so badly it was practically a physical ache. They’d never talked about it after, never even kissed, and Bucky always flirted with dames extra hard the next day. Would come home late at night smelling like perfume, lipstick smeared at the corner of his mouth and forced joviality in his step, and Steve had known that it didn’t mean anything to Bucky with the same certainty he knew that it very much did mean something to him.

He’d given up clinging to the hope that Bucky would ever feel the same way by the time the war came around, had forced himself to quash down the pathetic yearning that had been there at the back of his head for so many years. To stop being greedy, to be content with what he had. Bucky’s friendship was more than he deserved, and Bucky didn’t deserve to be… _tainted_ by all the things that Steve wanted. 

As long as he got to have Bucky in his life, he had decided, it didn’t actually matter how that happened.

And then Steve had met Peggy, and that had been it for him. He’d loved her with a clarity he’d never felt before, would’ve married her after the war was over and wouldn’t’ve regretted it a day in his life. Could’ve had his best friend and his best girl by his side for the rest of his days, and Steve’s damned if he can think of a happier ending to his own story.

Bucky is still staring at him, his eyes dark and intense and his head cocked to one side. Steve clears his throat, swallows hard.

“That was… friends helping each other out,” says Steve, careful and a little bit stilted. Trying not to give away just how much it feels as though the world’s been pulled out from under his feet. “You always said.”

Bucky snorts loudly, giving Steve a look that very clearly expresses just how idiotic he thinks his friend is being right now.

“Yeah, well, I fucking lied to you, didn’t I?” says Bucky roughly, eyes flashing, and Steve feels his whole body stiffen. Bucky lets out a pained noise, runs his metal hand through his hair. “Christ, Steve, I was a _kid_. You were my best friend and we were both _guys_ and I was a dumb fuck who didn’t know what the hell was going through my head.”

Steve’s mind is reeling, frantically trying to take in this new information and reconcile it with what he himself remembers, and it’s too much. It’s all too much, and Steve can barely think in a straight line right now.

“We never even kissed,” says Steve stupidly, and Bucky’s eyes harden.

“He wanted to,” Bucky shoots back, and for a second Steve is too upset that Bucky has regressed to referring to his old self as ‘he’ again that he doesn’t even register the actual words. By the time he does, Bucky is squeezing his eyes shut as though in chastisement, as though silently swearing at his mistake. “ _I_ wanted to,” he corrects after a moment, emphasizing the first word in correction. “I always did, Steve. Wanted to impress you so badly, wanted all these things I couldn’t have – I just didn’t know what it _meant_.” He laughs, hollow and humourless. “Started figuring it out once I went off to war, and then…”

And _that_ …

That’s just about enough to break Steve’s heart. The idea that just as Steve was finally moving on, as he was falling for Peggy and stamping down the last of any lingering feelings towards his best friend, Bucky was realizing just in time to do some longing of his own. Steve licks his lips.

“If it helps at all,” says Steve after a moment, his voice coming out even despite the way his heart is pounding in his chest. “You definitely succeeded at impressing me.” He shrugs. “Guess that’s something.”

Bucky laughs as though the sound has been yanked out of his chest, blinking hard as he punches Steve on the shoulder.

“I swear to god,” Bucky groans, but then he’s dragging his eyes up and down Steve’s face, his arms, his chest, and Steve forgets how to breathe for a second. “Steve,” he murmurs after a minute – not asking for anything, just a confirmation of fact.

Bucky’s already reaching up a hand – the flesh-and-bone one this time – and ghosting his fingers along Steve’s cheek.

“You’re more than a little bit bigger now than when I used to fantasize about this, y’know that?” Bucky half-whispers, leaning in close, and Steve can’t hold back a shiver at the idea of Bucky _wanting_ him when he was barely more than skin stretched over bones. Not just for getting each other off in the dark, but wanting to kiss him, _have_ him. It’s heady, overwhelming, and Steve wants to be kissed so badly he can barely think.

“Bucky,” Steve breathes, but whatever was going to come after that is cut off when Bucky’s hand curls around the back of his neck, when Bucky leans in and kisses him the way Steve’s been fantasizing about since he was fourteen years old.

They’ve never done this before, but somehow it feels like coming home anyways. Steve lets himself be kissed, lets Bucky pull him close and take charge, opening his mouth for Bucky’s tongue and hyper-aware of every sensation. Bucky smells like laundry detergent and shower gel and something else that hasn’t changed about him at all since 1945, and Steve inhales deeply as they kiss, takes it all in. He shivers when Bucky’s thumb drags along the line of his jaw, inhales sharply when Bucky nips and worries at Steve’s bottom lip.

It’s all too much and just enough and familiar, somehow, and Steve feels so unbelievably, effervescently happy that it’s all he can do to kiss back, to reach up and run his hands over the firm sides of Bucky’s waist. To let Bucky press him down into the couch and settle on top of him, mouth hungry and hands firmly keeping him in place. As though there’s anywhere else in the world he would rather be than here. The touch of his metal hand is shockingly cold on Steve’s right shoulder and he gasps out loud when Bucky grinds their hips together.

It’s just like Steve always imagined kissing Bucky would be like, but at the same time it’s different, too. He’s gentle and thorough but firm, so _firm_ , a hint of ruthlessness in the way he holds Steve down and _takes_ that makes Steve remember that the Winter Soldier is in there, too. Will always be in there, even at times like this, when it feels as though Bucky is trying to crawl inside his skin.

Steve will take it, though. Knows there’s nowhere in the world he’d rather be, feels so stupidly lucky to be able to have this, to have _him_. To have his best friend back, to be able to share this with him. It’s something Steve never thought he could have, not even after Bucky came back to him, and he can’t believe how perfectly _right_ this feels.  

Steve loved Bucky when they were two kids growing up in a rough part of town and he loved Bucky when they were young men living hard and he loved Bucky when he was steely and closed-off after being rescued during the war and he loved Bucky when he was dead and he loved Bucky when he was the Winter Soldier and he loves Bucky now. It hasn’t been the same love, all that time, but it’s always been there. It’s so much a part of him that Steve can’t separate it from the rest of himself, like the blood in his veins or the breath in his lungs.

He doesn’t have it in him to stop loving Bucky Barnes, and Steve is so relieved that he doesn’t think he’ll ever need to.

 

 

\--

 

 

**\+ One  
(One Year After)**

 

“This is the one,” Sam announces with conviction, gesturing at the title on the television screen with a crooked little smile on his face and a glint in his eye. “I’m telling you, this is the one!”

“I just don’t know if I can sit through another viewing of _Dr. Strangelove_ right now,” says Natasha from her place on one of the couches, not taking her eyes off her laptop, still scrolling through a list of Top 100 Most Iconic Movies she googled a bit earlier. She’s sprawled out like a lazy cat trying to take up as much room as possible, legs stretched out and looking deceptively relaxed. Sam throws his hands up in the air in frustration, still clutching the remote in his hand.  

They’re in Steve and Bucky’s living room, and the bickering about which movie to watch has been going in circles for almost a full twenty minutes now. All of them are sitting except for Sam, who already claimed the armchair as his own but is currently standing and pacing around with the remote in hand, clicking through titles and giving them exasperated looks every time they get off track. Natasha’s on one couch and Steve and Bucky are on the other, and Steve is fairly certain that the argument might just be more entertaining than any movie they might eventually settle on.

“C’mon, it can’t be that difficult to pick _one_ movie,” Bucky interjects, cocking an eyebrow at the two of them. His hair is styled a little bit for company and he’s wearing a button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up, clearly at ease with all of the people here. His metal arm is slung casually over the side of the couch, and he looks so _relaxed_ that it makes Steve smile just to look at him. He shoots Steve a little sideways look afterward, not trying to hide his amusement.

Steve tries to cover up his smile with an exaggerated yawn, but the look Sam shoots him says that he hasn’t been successful.

“Hey, don’t blame the 95-year-olds,” says Steve with exaggerated innocence. “Aren’t you two supposed to be the experts here?”

“Shut it, Steve,” says Sam, glaring at him, before turning his attention back to Natasha. “Suggestions?”

“What about _Memento_?” Natasha suggests after a moment, still reading off the list on her computer, and Sam looks at her as though she’s grown a second head.

“ _Fun_ movie night, Nat,” he emphasizes, boggling slightly. “The goal was to have a _fun_ movie night. That’s your idea of fun?”

“Don’t harp on me, Wilson, I haven’t seen like half of these,” Natasha replies, cool and even, but there’s a little smile nudging at the corner of her mouth that tells Steve she’s riling Sam up on purpose. Trying to get the best possible reaction out of him, and Steve’s so charmed that she isn’t actually trying to hide her play that he almost finds it _cute_.

“What about _Catch Me If You Can_?” Natasha suggests instead, and Sam perks up before Steve cuts him off.

“I’ve actually seen that one,” says Steve, and Sam turns to glare at him in disbelief. Steve shrugs. “What? I had almost a whole year where all I did was watch movies and read books by myself. I had to hit on a few important ones eventually.”

“That’s so sad I’m not even going to make fun of you,” says Natasha coolly without looking up from her laptop. “ _Grease_?”

“Man, I hate that movie,” says Sam derisively, before he perks up. “Ooh, what about _The Blues Brothers_?”

Steve feels Bucky poke him in the shoulder, which makes him lose track of Sam and Natasha’s conversation just as they start arguing back and forth about the value of R&B as a musical genre. He turns to look at his friend, a smile already plastered on his lips – when he registers the expression on Bucky’s face.

Bucky is looking at him with the kind of glowing intensity that always used to make pride swell up in Steve’s chest, used to make him feel like the king of the world instead of a scrawny kid from Brooklyn who never knew what was good for him. Bucky’s head is held high and his jaw is set, and his eyes are full of a mix of admiration and affection and _love_ that makes Steve feel just as special now as it used to back in the day.

Seeing Bucky look at him like that has always made Steve feel treasured and unworthy all at once, and now is no exception.

 “Hey,” Bucky murmurs after a moment, quirking his mouth but still staring at Steve intently. Steve smiles back at him.

“Hey,” Steve says back, allowing his eyes to wander over Bucky openly. With a smooth-shaven face and his hair styled into something only a little bit more modern than his old hairstyle, Steve could almost be looking at a window into the past.

There are a few key differences, of course. The way Bucky holds his centre tight now even when he’s relaxed, as though there’s a part of him that is always ready to strike out at a moment’s notice. The lines around his eyes that didn’t used to be there before, from age and trauma and mental strain alike. The glint of metal just peeking out from the gap at the front of his shirt and the exposed metal of his forearm, catching the light and gleaming like something playful instead of the deadly weapon that it is.

Bucky still has nightmares, some nights. Still wakes up gasping and searching for a weapon and clawing at the sheets of the bed they share together now, muttering or screaming or staring into space after jolting awake. Sometimes Steve’s soothing words are enough, and sometimes they’re not, and every once and a while Bucky has to get up and leave without talking, has to put on a coat and shoes over his pyjamas and walk until the world makes sense again.

Some days are better than others, and sometimes Steve fucks up. Tries to coddle him too much or doesn’t think about what he’s saying until it’s too late or makes it about himself when it’s not, but at least they’re getting better at actually talking about it instead of lapsing into guilty silences when things don’t go the right way.

They’re still figuring out how to make this new dimension of their relationship work properly, but Steve knows that they’ll get there. Knows it like he knows the lines of Bucky’s body, knows the way his smile looks in the sun. The way he knows the scars along his shoulder where the metal meets the skin.  

It’s more than he ever could have dreamed of, a year ago, and there are no words for how grateful he is that both of them have been given a second chance.

Bucky doesn’t say anything, doesn’t make a smart-ass remark or make fun of Steve for staring. Instead, he very slowly and very subtly inches his hand across the space between them and takes Steve’s hand in his own.

It’s barely enough to be called holding hands, just the tips of Bucky’s fingers curling around the tips of Steve’s. It’s his real hand, the original one, the one made out of flesh and blood and sinew and bone, and his fingers feel warm and real and present against Steve’s own.

Steve starts at the contact, practically _jolts_ in surprise, glancing down quickly at their joined hands before looking up at Bucky again questioningly. It’s the first display of affection – not friendship, but _romantic affection_ – that they’ve displayed in the month they’ve been slowly working out the new dynamic between them. They haven’t told anyone, and although Steve suspects that Natasha at least has managed to figure it out, this is the first time they’ve been overt about it in public.

Steve doesn’t pull away, and he doesn’t clutch at Bucky’s hand and hold on for dear life either. Instead, he stays still and lets their fingers maintain the feather-light contact, holding Bucky’s gaze and smiling so wide it feels as though his face might split right in half.

“ _Guys_ ,” comes Natasha’s voice, in a tone that implies this isn’t the first time she’s called out to them.

They both swivel their heads to look at her, sprawled on the couch with the most smugly satisfied expression on her face. Steve feels heat rise in his face as he remembers her relentless matchmaking, realizes for the first time that she hasn’t suggested a date for him since about two weeks after they first brought Bucky home. Her mouth is curved in a little smile, and when Steve glances over at Sam he sees a more open version of the same expression on Sam’s face.

“We think we’ve finally settled on _The Princess Bride_ ,” Sam explains, his smile relentless even as he cocks an eyebrow at the two of them. “What d’you think?”

Without missing a beat, Bucky wrinkles his nose. “Sounds girly as hell,” he admits, glancing between Natasha and Sam with a wry expression on his face. “But if it’s good enough to make the two of you stop bickering and actually agree on something, I’m guessing it’s good enough to watch. Steve?”

“Sounds great to me,” Steve replies with a smile, and Sam let out an audible whoop of success as he starts flipping through program on the television in search of the right file. Bucky’s fingertips are warm and solid against his own, and every little brush of movement makes Steve more aware of his solidity, of his _closeness_.

The past year hasn’t been easy. None of it’s been easy; not waking up in the future and not the war and not even their life before they enlisted. It’s been hard and long and difficult every step of the way, slogging through mud and sifting through rubble and every single part of it so, so worth it.

If it means that Steve gets to sit here, surrounded by the three people he trusts more than anyone else in the world, all of them happy and healthy and as whole as they possibly can be under the circumstances, then he’ll take the hard work and the uncertainty and the long nights every time.

“Let’s watch,” says Steve contentedly, settling back into his seat on the couch, the touch of Bucky’s fingertips still real and present against his own.

 

 

 

 

 

**The End**

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed the fic, please consider leaving a comment. I would really appreciate it! 
> 
> You can also feel free to join me over on my [tumblr](http://emilianadarling.tumblr.com), where my Captain America obsession is shamelessly on display 24/7. ~~I have a serious Winter Soldier problem.~~


End file.
